


Now watch me rise up

by studyintime



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU, Gen, I don't let Ten regenerate, New Year's Eve, TARDIS is awesome, post-journey's end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-05-25
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:04:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/studyintime/pseuds/studyintime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once again the TARDIS has to take care of things while the Doctor is being all angsty and drama queen. A fluffy New Year's AU for those who refuse to accept Journey's End and End of Time's endings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now watch me rise up

_Now watch me rise up and leave all the ashes you made out of me  
When you said that we were wrong, life goes on, just look how long I've agreed_  
 **Embrace** \- _Ashes_  
  
  
Donna hates New Year’s Eves.  
  
It hadn’t always been that way, though. When she was younger, she used to make New Year’s resolutions that she managed to stick with for one or two weeks and that made her feel like she could actually change anything in her life. When she grew up, she reduced her expectations to one thing only: hoping that the next year won’t be as terrible as the previous one. Now she no longer waits for the last and the first day, she doesn’t do parties and celebrations and last year she even slept through midnight, because she was too tired to stay awake.  
  
Donna hates New Year’s Eves because they give people false belief in making a change while in fact they only make them older and even more miserable.  
  
*  
  
The Doctor doesn’t do New Year’s Eves unless it happens by an accident. To be honest, he doesn’t even notice them, as time flows differently in every part of the Universe and if he was to celebrate each end and beginning he wouldn’t have time for anything else. Occasionally he just happens to be in the right place at the right time to watch humans appreciate time once in a year. He just never knows if they’re happier to leave one year behind or greet the other, it’s always so confusing with them.  
  
This year New Year’s Eve hasn’t even crossed the Doctor’s mind. In fact, if someone asked him, New Year’s Eve would probably be on the list of the last ten things the Doctor might care about now, somewhere between pears and Midnight’s gemstone stocks. Right now he had slightly more important things on his mind. Like, for instance, crashing. Or, to be more accurate, trying to avoid it.  
  
Which really wasn’t that easy when you were handcuffed to one of the chairs and had only one leg to operate the console.  
  
Thank Gallifrey he had been blessed with long limbs.  
  
*  
  
Donna was just about to follow Wilfred home from the hill when she saw a falling star.  
  
Except it wasn’t a falling star. A skip, more likely, judging from the distance. Or a toilet cubicle, though she had no idea why would that be falling from the sky (not that a skip made any more sense). She watched it fall and crash not far from the hill.  
  
“Donna, are you coming?”  
  
“Yes, gramp, in a second. I just have to... check something. I’ll meet you at home.”  
  
She didn’t even think for a moment what she was doing, it was like her feet knew better where she should be and she just couldn’t resist them. She ran down the hill and strode across the field, tingling sensations running through her mind.  
  
*  
  
The Doctor shook his head, getting rid of the dust and tiny screws from his hair. He checked his internal organs – one heart’s working, that’s good, air still flowing through his lungs, even better, and, oh, second heart’s working too, perfect – and tried to move. Impossible. He was beginning to think that for the first time in a century he managed to break his bones when he realised that he was still handcuffed to what used to be one of the seats. He looked around only to find that his screwdriver must have slipped from his pocket during the crash and was now lying on the ground on the other side of the console. _Obviously._ He sighed theatrically and was about to start working on the handcuffs (even though he knew he had little chances with the work of the cops of Intergalactic Traffic Police) when he heard some noises outside the TARDIS. He knew nobody was be able to enter it, not without a key, but still, a police box falling from the sky and crashing in the middle of God knows where must have drawn some attention.  
  
The Doctor looked at the screen and both his hearts stopped for exactly a second. It was Donna.  
  
The Doctor had never had a panic attack before but he thought that now might be a good time for one. He looked at the screen again to see if Donna was showing any signs of post-meta crisis complications, but there was no Donna.  
  
“Donna, no!” he yelled, but she’d already walked in.  
  
Donna looked at him like he was a weird exhibit in a museum.  
  
“How do you know my name?”  
  
A tiny spark of hope lit in the Doctor’s heart but then Donna looked at the console and he saw it in her eyes. He tried pulling the handcuffs out but there was no point, it was already too late.  
  
*  
  
 _Just a tiny bit earlier and in a completely different part of the Universe_  
  
 _He’s never going to realise how lucky he is that he’s got me_ , thought the TARDIS and if she could only sigh, she would definitely do that now. Instead, she just watched the Doctor act like a drama queen he liked to be from time to time and made a mental note to never let him spend another Christmas alone. That never did him any good.  
  
“I don’t wanna go,” said the Doctor, sounding as if he was going to cry.  
  
 _Well, now you’re talking_ , thought the TARDIS as she kicked the deck open and let the time vortex fly free. She knew it didn’t contain enough regeneration power to keep him in this state for too long so she had to act quickly. She sped through the space and time, while the Doctor was staring in disbelief at his hands.  
  
“How-“ he began, when suddenly the TARDIS stopped, all the lights going out.  
  
 _Crap_ , thought the TARDIS.  
  
“Intergalactic Traffic Police,” said a hologram. “You exceeded the Milky Way speed limit by ten light years. Your spaceship will remain in this position until an officer arrives to take you to the nearest station. You will remain handcuffed to prevent any possibilities of escape. Thank you and have a nice day.”  
  
Before the Doctor realised, two electronic handcuffs attached to the seat closed around his wrists and he was unable to move anything but his legs.  
  
 _Oh, we don’t have time for this_ , thought the TARDIS as she turned the engines back on and sped even faster, avoiding all the space highways this time. She needed a Time Lord’s power and she knew only one place where she could find it.  
  
This evening she was going to save more than just the Doctor.  
  
*  
  
Donna was pretty sure her head was about to explode, it had to, because she just couldn’t take the pain any longer. And then, just as she was beginning to wonder why there were images of giant salt-cellars in her mind, she saw a dazzling light that filled her eyes and went further, straight to her brain. For a few seconds she felt like she was dying (she knew how that felt, because she had died once, a long time ago, she could remember that now) and then it all became clear. Time vortex has left her brain and went straight to the Doctor. She blinked a few times and when her vision had cleared, she looked at the Doctor who was` murmuring something to himself .  
  
“You wiped out my memory?” she said, her voice reaching dangerous pitches of anger.  
  
“I had no other choice!”  
  
“Your bloody spaceship found a solution while the only brilliant thing you could come up with was taking away the most important memories of my life! What sort of Time Lord are you? How did you even manage to live nine hundred years without a proper brain?!”  
  
She really wanted to be mad at him, she wanted to just go and grab the closest thing and throw it at him but she couldn’t even keep yelling. Maybe it was everything that had happened in her brain, maybe – _God preserve me_ , she thought – maybe it had changed something in her personality but she just couldn’t be angry with this man anymore.  
  
“You’ve no idea how much I’ve missed you,” he said, a huge smile spreading across his face.  
  
“You’re lucky I’ve no idea how much I’ve missed you,” she answered, fighting a twitch of her mouth and finally giving in.  
  
She noticed the sonic screwdriver on the floor and an idea popped into her head.  
  
“Let’s make a deal. If you promise to come with me to my house and celebrate the bloody New Year’s Eve with me and my family I’ll unlock the handcuffs. There will be also other demands but we’ll work on that later.”  
  
“Do you even know how to use it?” asked Doctor, pointing at the screwdriver with his chin.  
  
“Oi! You have no idea what sorts of things TARDIS let me keep in my brain. I don’t need Time Lord’s mind to be clever, you know. So, what it’s gonna be?”  
  
Doctor sighed but she knew he didn’t even need to think about the answer, even with the prospect of meeting her mother again. She could see it in the way he looked at her, that pure joy that filled him at the beginning of every unknown adventure.  
  
“Okay. But you’ll have to go and do the explaining first, I don’t want your husband to just go and kill me after everything I’ve survived today.”  
  
“Oh. No, there’s no husband, just me, mom, gramps and aunt Susan.”  
  
Doctor looked confused.  
  
“Last time I saw you, which was about fifteen minutes ago, you’d just got married. What happened?”  
  
Donna shifted uncomfortably between feet.  
  
“Shaun left me two years after the wedding.”  
  
The Doctor looked like he was calculating something in his mind.  
  
“Donna, what year is it?”  
  
The second he finished that sentence they heard fireworks going off outside the TARDIS.  
  
“Right now we’re beginning two thousand and twelve. Happy New Year.”  
  
They looked at each other and burst out laughing in the same moment.  
  
  
(From that year on, Donna started celebrating New Year’s Eve once again. Still no New Year resolutions, though. She decided being spontaneous worked better for her.  
  
As for the Doctor, from that year on he had never missed any Earth’s New Year’s Eve and even if he were on the other side of the Universe he always raised a toast to the new beginning.)


End file.
